Adam Walton
DM Voice
Final Project Proposal
PROPOSED TITLE
Brooks, Rivers, and Oceans: The Symbolism of Water in the songs of Franz Schubert
JUSTIFICATION
Franz Schubert stands as an archetypal romantic and one of the quintessential lied
composers. The sheer volume of his output is staggering with more than 600 songs. This creates
a problem because it is difficult to create a canon of essential Schubert songs without leaving
some masterpiece out in the cold. I looked at several major lied anthologies to see how many
Schubert songs they included. A brief perusal showed approximately forty Schubert songs
(representing less than ten percent of his output) that were published in them. Of those forty
songs, ten of them were repeated multiple times. Those ten songs, comprising less than two
percent of Schubert’s output, might represent the commonly taught canon for a young singer.
As is said, Schubert’s tremendous output creates a problem. I would rather have more
Schubert songs than fewer, but because of the number of songs there is a tremendous
opportunity for explorations of songs that are less commonly performed. In order to add some
degree of direction into this inquiry, rather than just grabbing songs randomly, I’ve chosen to
look at how Schubert depicts water in his songs, as well as the symbols and themes that he
associates with it.
SOURCES, MATERIALS, AND METHODOLOGY
I have chosen nine Schubert songs, some well-known, some obscure, to focus my efforts
on. I will analyze the associations and symbolism that Schubert ties to water, as well as looking
at how exactly he portrays water in the piano parts of the songs. I will perform the works from
the critical edition scores contained in the Neue Schubert Ausgabe, and those scores will also
serve as the main sources for analysis.
I will supplement the scores with some of the many book and articles written about
Schubert to provide background and commentary. In particular Susan Youens’ Schubert’s poets
and the making of lieder is pertinent to this work because of the large number of different
poets that I’m including in the work. John Reed’s The Schubert Song Companion also provides a
useful jumping off point in my analysis because it is one of the few sources which covers both
the well-known and the more obscure songs.
ORGANIZATION AND EXPECTED CONCLUSION
My work will look at the symbols and themes associated water in the songs of Schubert.
I will attempt to understand and explain these questions: What symbolic meaning does water
hold in the work of Schubert? How does he depict water in the piano? Does the key of the piece
play a role in its meaning? Does this symbolism exist in songs for all voice types, or is it mainly
confined to works for lower voices? I will explain the connection of water to death, loss,
betrayal, and the sublime.
Schubert constantly associates water with negative feeling. Perhaps the easiest
connection is that of water to tears. In several of the songs that I’ve chosen, tears figure
prominently. Am Meer is a perfect example of this sort of imagery. While the sea is initially the
obvious reference to water, the memorable image is that of the woman’s tears as poison. Just
as the sea appears to be calm and beautiful before turning dangerous, the tears appear to be
harmless before they consume the singer, betrayed by his love and naïveté.
This sense of betrayal is not isolated to a single song. Even a comparatively happysounding song like Die Forelle harbors disillusionment and betrayal. The pleasure and
enjoyment of the singer watching the trout is soon ruined by the conniving fisherman. The
interesting thing about this song is the reversal of roles. In most of Schubert’s water songs the
water itself is dangerous; in this song the human ruined the water.
Even though the water is usually the most dangerous element in the songs, the previous
song shows that humans are not always completely helpless against the flows and eddies of
fate. In Der Schiffer this idea is brought out even more strongly. This man is able to navigate the
dangers of the water successfully and presumably make a living because of this. The boatman
happily throws out his chest in the face of the storm.
The rest of the work will continue to explore each of the songs, as well as to flesh out
some of the themes already mentioned. In particular I still need to talk about death and loss
and their close association to water.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
List of Songs
D. 215a Meerestille – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
D. 361 Am Bach im Fruhling– Franz von Schober
D. 526 Fahrt Zum Hades – Johann Baptist Mayrhofer
D. 536 Der Schiffer – Johann Baptist Mayrhofer
D. 550 Die Forelle – Christian Schubart
D. 553 Auf der Donau – Johann Baptist Mayrhofer
D. 565 Der Strom – Anon.
D. 957 No. 5 Aufenthalt – Heinrich Heine
D. 957 No. 12 Am Meer – Heinrich Heine
Other Citations
Byrne, Lorraine. Schubert's Goethe Settings. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub Ltd, 2003.
Howe, Blake. “The Allure of Dissolution: Bodies, Forces, and Cyclicity in Schubert's Final
Mayrhofer Settings.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 62, no. 2 (Summer
2009): 271-322.
Kramer, Richard. “Schubert's Heine” 19th-Century Music 8, no. 3 (Spring, 1985): 213-25.
Lambert, Sterling. “Franz Schubert and the Sea of Eternity.” The Journal of Musicology 21, no. 2
(Spring 2004): 241-66.
Moore, Gerald. The Schubert Song Cycles: with Thoughts On Performance. London: Hamish
Hamilton, 1975.
Reed, John. The Schubert Song Companion. Manchester, UK.: Mandolin, 1997.
Schubert, Franz, and Walther Durr (ed). Franz Schubert, Serie Iv; Neue Ausgabe Samtlicher
Werke: Lieder Band 4, Teil B. New York: Barenreiter Verlag, 1979.
Schubert. The Complete Song Texts: Texts of the Lieder and Italian Songs. 1st American ed. New
York: Schirmer Books, 1988.
STYLE MANUAL
I will use Turabian citations for the written portion of this lecture-recital.